Ben Peltz - Page 3

In an Almeida Theatre and Headlong co-production, Lyndsey Turner directs the World Premiere of Lucy Kirkwood's Chimerica. The production runs at the Almeida Theatre until 6 July 2013, with press night on 28 May. Set designs are by Es Devlin with costumes by Christina Cunningham, lighting by Tim Lutkin, sound by Carolyn Downing and video design by Finn Ross.

ATTIC Theatre Company and Sixteenfeet Productions are set to bring a little sunshine to South London this summer, as they join forces to present TWELFTH NIGHT or What You Will in two magical outdoor locations. Morden Hall Park and Brockwell Park will by turns host this exciting new staging of Shakespeare's bittersweet comedy, between 27th June and 14th July.

Pride Films and Plays announces that Directions for Restoring the Apparently Dead by Martin Casella was named the winner of the 2013 Great Gay Play Contest. In this lovely new drama, past and present collide when a straight man and gay man reconnect after life-shattering experiences.

In the 1920s and early 1930s, female factory workers, later known as radium girls, contracted radium poisoning from painting watch dials with glow-in-the-dark paint at the United States Radium Factory in Ottawa, Illinois. The women, who had been told the paint was harmless, ingested deadly amounts of radium by licking their paintbrushes to give them a fine point. Five of the workers challenged their employer in a landmark case that travelled to the US Supreme Court and established the right of individuals who contracted 'occupational diseases' to sue their employers.

All these interesting rumors going around about how the new Broadway production of Cinderella is trying to make the title character more of a role model for young girls. I hear today they're changing the lyric of the big ballad to 'Do I Love You Because You're Feminist?'

Laurie Metcalf is already seated center stage as patrons enter the Samuel J. Friedman Theatre for Manhattan Theatre Club's production of The Other Place, tempting less-sophisticated playgoers to yell out, “We loved you in Roseanne!”

“If you'd like to sing along with us, please don't.  It confuses me.”

It doesn't happen often, but, fair or not, there's always a little extra pressure put on a play when it comes to New York after having already won the Pulitzer Prize.  Quiara Alegría Hudes, a Pulitzer finalist for both Elliot, a Soldier's Fugue and her co-authorship of In The Heights, was awarded top honors last year for Water By The Spoonful, which was commissioned by Hartford Stage, where it premiered in 2011.  Shortly after, the recently-opened Off-Broadway mounting was placed on Second Stage's schedule.

Norm Lewis is in a commercial for Cialis. Unfortunately, it doesn't begin with him singing 'I Got Plenty Of Nothing' and end with him singing 'Bess, You Is My Woman Now.'

Norm Lewis is in a commercial for Cialis. Unfortunately, it doesn't begin with him singing 'I Got Plenty Of Nothing' and end with him singing 'Bess, You Is My Woman Now.'

If you have a hankering to see a room full of grown-ups acting like those teenagers watching The Beatles on the Ed Sullivan show, then get thee to The Metropolitan Room, where Marilyn Maye is doing her traditional job of knocking 'em dead.

Even if the names Marc Kudisch and Jeffrey Denman are as foreign to you as the middle monikers of the three wise men, there's a wonderful familiarity to their on-stage personas as The Holiday Guys.  It's the kind of relaxed, off-the-cuff give and take that's been enjoyed for generations, whether packaged as Hope and Crosby, Allen and Rossi or Brooks and Reiner.

The subjectivity of the truth appears to be a running theme in the intriguing work of young playwright, Amy Herzog, who follows the recent success of After The Revolution and 4,000 Miles with a moving drama, The Great God Pan.

It's a rare performer that can generate so much affection from an audience by regarding them with unrestrained contempt, but Jackie Hoffman has cultivated a unique niche for herself in New York's lengthy history of comic actors who partner with their Jewish heritage acting as straight man.

It feels like familiar territory as soon as the lights go up on two people, mid-conversation, speaking in that jaunty rhythm of clipped communication; those overlapping thoughts and unfinished sentences where you can sense every dot of each ellipsis.

Set during one of the most tumultuous periods in our country's history, Paula Vogel weaves several intimate stories of soldiers, escaped slaves, would-be kidnappers and the country's first couple into a comforting evening of holiday storytelling, A Civil War Christmas.  Director Tina Landau, music director Andrew Resnick and a talented ensemble of eleven tread through episodes of tragedy, racism, frivolity and hopefulness in a display that hints at, while not exactly drawing parallels to, a traditional nativity pageant.

From The Jazz Singer to Fiddler On The Roof to Yentl and beyond, Jewish drama on the American stage has regularly explored the topic of youthful straying from traditional ways.  The newest example to hit Off-Broadway, based on Chaim Potok's 1972 novel, is Aaron Posner's My Name Is Asher Lev, a warm and humorous addition to the genre.

Yes, I'll say it.  The 1959 Broadway stage version of The Sound of Music is far superior to 1965 film adaptation.  Yeah, yeah, I know…  The Oscar-winning best picture has all that lovely Austrian and Bavarian scenery and those cute kids and, oh yeah, Julie Andrews as the young postulant, Maria, sent to serve as governess to the seven children of Naval Captain Georg Ludwig von Trapp.  But it also has a watered-down screenplay by Ernest Lehman that cuts two of the best songs in Rodgers and Hammerstein's score and eliminates one of the most interesting aspects of Howard Lindsay and Russel Crouse's original book; the depiction of nice, likeable Austrians who, unaware of the full extent of Hitler's atrocities, argue against resistance of the German overthrow of their country.  The stage musical even includes an important scene, altered in the film, where a Nazi in uniform commits a selfless act of compassion that helps rescue the von Trapps.

If the world were a little more just and the general public's taste for musical theatre a lot more cerebral, news of a new Michael John LaChiusa musical would cause the same kind of box office frenzy that in the 1940s and 50s greeted announcements of Rodgers and Hammerstein's latest.  Or at least match the high expectations these days whenever another Stephen Sondheim revival is mounted.

Did somebody decide when I wasn't listening that this would be the season where all translations of classic plays must contain occasional forays into anachronistic contemporary language?  First came An Enemy of the People and Cyrano de Bergerac, and now Carol Rocamora's adaptation of Chekhov's Ivanov, being used in CSC's schizophrenically handsome/punkish production, would have us believing the playwright had his characters uttering the 19th Century Russian equivalents of “harangue,” “He's a real operator” and “Hope you choke.”